MayMayMayMayMay, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000

The descendants of Mordecai and Miriam Schattilwill gather on October 20, 21, and 22, 2000 for thefirst time in 120 years. Early responses indicate thatabout 50 people will attend the reunion, which willbe held in and around San Francisco, California, USA.

Local kin will host receptions, dinners and pre-sentations where family members can catch up withlong lost relatives, meet newly found cousins, dis-cover family lore, enjoy the presentation of a whim-sical Schattil Family Anthem, and sample theLithuanian cuisine that drove our ancestors out oftheir homeland.

Reunion highlights include a Friday eveningKaddish and dinner, presentation of an illustrated fam-ily history and tree, show and tell, oral history ses-sions and a contest of skill and cunning pitting the

artists against the doctors.Accommodations for the weekend can be ar-

ranged directly with your relatives in the San Fran-cisco Area (book early to avoid disappointment) orthrough the Reunion Committee, who will offer achoice of group-discounted rates at a hotel near thereunion events or week-long stays at nearby condo-miniums.

50 relatives expected at reunion in San Francisco

This award winning photograph, along with oth-ers on the back page, was taken by ArthurShattil. Art's pictures helped reunite twobranches of the family.

My 1995 visit to Lithuania searching for rootsBy By By By By VVVVVictorictorictorictorictor Dubowitz Dubowitz Dubowitz Dubowitz Dubowitz

When I attended the meeting of the BalticPediatric Neurology Association in Palanga,Lithuania, in 1995, I thought I would trace my rootswhile I was there.

I accordingly spent an extra four days in Lithuaniaprior to the conference. Rachel Kostanian at theJewish Museum in Vilnius, helped me plan the tripand also arranged a taxi to take me to the variousplaces as well as an English speaking guide withexpertise on archival matters.

I arrived in Vilnius on Wednesday and planned tospend the rest of the day plus the next exploringVilnius and environs, the Friday visiting Kaunas(Kovno) and the Saturday heading for Paneves,Siauliai (Shavl), and Telsiai (Telz), and spendingSunday in Telz and environs, and visiting Plunge(Plungyan) and Klaipeda (Memel) en route toPalanga, for the opening of my conference in theevening.

My paternal grandfather, Nathan Dubowitz, cameto South Africa in the 1890s from a small town,Pasvetin, north of Paneves. My guide, ReginaKopilevich, a physicist by training, but now aprofessional archivist and genealogist, thought themost useful source of births and deaths records forPasvetin would be the synagogue records for Paneves,which she had available from 1850 to 1920.

After a meticulous search, she was unable to finda single Dubowitz (although there were quite a fewSchattils recorded (Mum’s maiden name). She thenthought of looking through first names, Nechama,the son of....., but I had no knowledge of my

Family NewsFamily NewsFamily NewsFamily NewsFamily NewsElliot StewartElliot StewartElliot StewartElliot StewartElliot Stewart, son of Ron and Sherry (Shattil)Ron and Sherry (Shattil)Ron and Sherry (Shattil)Ron and Sherry (Shattil)Ron and Sherry (Shattil)

StewartStewartStewartStewartStewart, will marry Amy Jennifer GadlinAmy Jennifer GadlinAmy Jennifer GadlinAmy Jennifer GadlinAmy Jennifer Gadlin on May22.

Send family news to: Ron Shattil, 9200 SkylineBlvd., Oakland, CA 94611 USA,

Arthur Shattil (second from right) stands in front of his prize withbrothers Melvin (left) and Siegfried (right), and mother, Ann.

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Creative Art

Creative ArtCute photos that Arthur Shattil staged not only won con-

tests but contributed to lost branches of the family becomingreacquainted.

Art started winning contests when he was a teenager. In1932 he won a car given away by Walgreen Drug Stores byfilling in an entry blank and purchasing three packs of chew-ing gum.

In the 1940s he took a photo of his then infant son, Sanford,intently sitting in front of a typewriter with a pencil over hisear and seemingly typing with his fingers and toes. Sanforddoesn't remember how his dad got him to cooperate.

"All that early training did not help since I still use thehunt and peck method for typing," Sanford recalled.

Another photo was a picture of cats sipping milk from aglass via straws.

"I think he once told me he put honey on the tips of thestraws to get the cats to cooperate," Sanford wrote.

Art entered the same photos in contests over the yearsand won countless prizes.

Meanwhile, in Rhodesia, Esme Schattil Newfield, cameacross one of Art's unique photos, according to Esme's daugh-ter, Valerie Koff.

"My late mother, Esme, was not only a cat lover but shewas also a subscriber to the American Ladies Home Journal

and would look forward to her magazineeach month," Valerie said.

She was paging through the magazineand came across a cute picture of a cat wear-ing a sombrero and winking. She looked atthe name of the photographer, Art Shattil.Shattil is not a common name so she wroteto the editor and explained that she had beena Schattil. She knew that the family had goneto America and asked if they could give herArt's address.

Ladies Home Journal forwarded her let-ter to him. That was the start of the contactas Art replied to her and indeed, he was herrelative. They started to correspond and afew years later Esme's sister, Leslie, came tothe USA and met the family in Chicago.

Sanford doesn't remember Art takingmany more photos while he and his sister,Sherry, were growing up.

"But these early ones do indicate a flairfor the artistic that seems to run through thefamily," Sanford said. "The artistic genes re-main silent in my case, but fortunately theywere passed on to [my son] Jason, who is anaccomplished jazz pianist known throughoutthe mid-Atlantic area."

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Search for roots leadsto Holocaust memoriesgrandfather’s fathers first name!

So on the Friday night in Vilnius I phonedAuntie Annie in Capetown to ask her the firstname of her grandfather, but she had norecollection. I then phoned Ben Maiman, sonof Sarah, sister of Nathan, who he broughtout from Lithuania after the turn of thecentury. He had no recollection either. I thenphoned the font of all genealogicalknowledge, Jean in Pottsville, Pennsylvania,who said it’s quite obvious, just look atNathan’s tombstone.

I had visited the grave in Beaufort Westin December and fortunately had a photocopyof the photograph with me. And there itwas...Nechama bar Shimoin. (my oldestcousin, son of Jack, my father’s eldest brother,was called Simeon, presumably after him).

So, Regina scanned the records for thebirth of a Nechama bar Shimoin, who died inBeaufort West in 1932 at the age of 58, andwould thus have been born in 1874. No luck.So we headed off the next morning forPaneves and Pasvetin, with the excellent taxiservice of Regina’s sister, Dina, apharmacologist, doing a bit of daylighting inher spare time.

Paneves is quite a big town, and like manyothers in Lithuania, noted for the bulldozingof its Jewish cemetery by the Russians, whoused the broken up tombstones as buildingmaterial in the construction of a theatre, manyof the Hebrew inscriptions still being visibleon fragments of the granite.

Driving from Paneves toward Pasvetin, Icould imagine myself driving to BeaufortWest. The countryside is flat and the roadspretty straight. I entered Pasvetin on anunpaved road and was immediately struck thatit is small, in a rural setting, surrounded byfarms. The main street ends after a couple ofhundred yards in the small square, with thechurch on the northern side. There were afew brick houses around the square, possiblyinhabited by the Jews, whereas mostbuildings, as in most towns are of wood.

The population before the war was abouta thousand with about 100 Jews. There was

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another one.” It was Libshe bat KalmanDubowitz. So my father, Charley (Kalman)was named after his father’s grandfather onhis mother’s side. According to the Hebrewdates, Shimoin died in 1915 and Libshe in1925. We were unable to find any otherDubowitzes. There were also a few moregravestones with more ornate lettering butmost were of the simple form with asemicircular top and plain lettering. Somewere badly weathered and couldn't be read.

After this unexpected, somewhat dramaticand extremely emotional experience, weheaded back to town and Regina trackeddown the two oldest inhabitants. ValiaPivurjena, was 82 and lived in Pasvetin since1929, and was born about 6 miles fromPasvetin. She recalled a Dubowitz Maike(Michael), born 1916, who used to milk cowswith her. His family owned cows. Maike livedwhere the cafe now stands on the main roadand the shuhl was nearby. The big fire on 13June 1941 destroyed most of the woodenbuildings. This was a week before the Germaninvasion.

She recalled the Germans put all the Jewsin town in the brick school building then tookthem to Joniskis, where they were killed. One16-year-old Jewish girl Maryte (Miriam)Schneider, survived the shooting and waslooked after by the local priest, Dishetsky. Shewas still alive. One Pasvetin resident, apharmacist, Gandel, survived the war.

We then drove to Joniskis to track downMaryte. There is still an old woodensynagogue building in Joniskis. On inquiry,Regina was told that all the Jews had beentaken from Joniskis to Zagare, further northon the Latvian border, where there was aJewish ghetto and were massacred there.Maryte was apparently still living there. Wethen drove on to Zagare and tracked downMaryte’s house but it was locked. Theneighbour said she did live there but was illand in the hospital— in Joniskis. We thendrove back to Joniskis, went to the hospital,and there she was, recovered frompneumonia.

The story she told was that she and herfamily had indeed been taken by the Germansto Joniskis and on to Zagare. An edict camefrom the Germans that all the Jews were toassemble in the town square on a particularday, as they were being taken to labour camps.The night before she had a visit from aLithuanian chap she knew who was a

projectionist for the cinema He told her thatshe shouldn’t go to the square the followingday but should come to his house as it wouldbe safer. She decided that she did not wish toaccept the offer as she felt she had to go withher parents to the labour camp.

The following day the Jews assembled inthe square and were all shot, mainly by theLithuanian militia. Her mother was alreadywounded but she was still unhurt when thechap came and took her away. He took herto the deputy commissioner of police andasked him to take her into his employ as amaid, which he did. However, after aboutthree days rumour got round that a Jewishgirl had escaped and she was tracked downand put in the prison. There she was visitedby the priest who heard her story andcontacted the local priest.

He then concocted a story that she wasin fact not Jewish, but had been born to apoor peasant couple, who could not affordto rear her and brought her in to the employof the Shneider family who later adopted her.He produced the appropriate false birthcertificate and documents, which wereaccepted and that is how she survived.

After the war she married a man fromLatvia and had four children and several

grandchildren. Her married name isTiesniesiene.

a wooden shuhl, but a couple of days beforethe German invasion in 1941 there was amassive fire in the town, started accidentallyby some school children, which destroyedmost of the buildings, including the shuhl.

Regina spoke to several of the townsfolk,most of whom were of post-war vintage, andhad no recollection of the name Dubowitz.We then visited the Jewish Cemetery about amile outside the town. It was unfenced andcompletely overgrown, but now protectedsince the Lithuanians after independence fromthe Russians started protecting such sites.There was a notice in Hebrew and Lithuanian.Regina and I wandered in through the thickundergrowth and in the far side away fromthe road we came across a few tombstones.Within minutes of starting to look a bit moreclosely at some of the fairly simply granitestones, Regina called out, “Congratulations,it is a Dubowitz.”

And there it was, with clearly legibleHebrew lettering, Shimoin bar JaakovDubowitz. So Jack was named after thegrandfather of his father, Nathan. A fewstones away, Regina called out, “Here’s

Telse

A sign tower outside the town of Telse

Victor Dubowitz holding a root found in the cem-etery. He took it home to make into a sculpture.